Ship shape and Bristol fashion

The Marlens’ technical team have been kept busy around Clevedon Marine Lake during the winter months doing lots of essential maintenance and repair work as well as installing new facilities such as the concrete benches and donation boxes. As Lake Day approaches on Saturday 24th March, the pace will pick up to ensure everything’s ship shape to kick start lake season.

Alan Wilson, who heads up all things technical at the lake, fills us in:

The Lake doesn’t exactly care for itself! There will be litter picking sessions occurring with increasing frequency over the next few weeks. As the weather improves, and spring is anticipated, we will have more visitors to the lake and that inevitably generates more work for us!

On 10th March we will be carrying out the first deep clean of the season in the splash pools. We stop the water entering the pool, drain it and then pressure wash it to remove silt and any algae. We’re currently exploring a paint treatment for the bottom of the splash pools to help reduce any build up.

On 17th March we will replace the flags on the upper promenade (supplied by North Somerset Council) and put the splash pool hand pump back in place.

If we can get a few dry days without seawater lapping over the lake edges, we will also be painting new ‘NO DIVING’ notices around the lake border. The donation boxes will also go back up over the next few weeks following the initial vandal attack.

Subject to funding being available, we will also try to get more concrete plinth benches in place this year.

De-silting the lake bed has been deferred until late autumn to avoid draining the lake during peak season.

Any volunteers or BLOG readers with useful DIY skills are welcome to join our technical team. We can always use more help!